‘Thank You for Your Service’ a compelling, sincere drama about soldiers returning home with PTSD | Movie review

Miles Teller, left, and Beulah Koale share a scene from,”Thank You for Your Service.” The drama follows a group of U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq who struggle to integrate back into family and civilian life.
Francois Duhamel — DreamWorks Pictures via AP

Adapted for the screen and directed by “American Sniper” screenwriter Jason Hall and based on a true story, the drama looks at members of a U.S. Army battalion who return home to Topeka, Kansas; they wish to pick back up their lives but must deal with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, as so many men and women who have engaged in combat must.

The film is based on the acclaimed 2015 by book journalist David Finkel. It followed the lives of members of the 2-16 Infantry Battalion for a couple of years in Baghdad. In adapting the story for film, Hall focuses on Sgt. Adam Schumann, portrayed in the film by Miles Teller (“Whiplash”).

Advertisement

“I was a good soldier,” Adam says in a bit of opening narration. “I had purpose, and I loved it.”

After Hall shows us a combat sequence that will have lasting ramifications for Adam, we see him flying home, following his third tour of duty. He is seated with two other members of his unit from Topeka, Will Waller (Joe Cole, “Secret in Their Eyes”) and Tausolo “Solo” Aeiti (Beulah Koale, “The Last Saint”). All seems well as they joke about a sex tape Will had shown them of him and his fiance and Solo talks of wanting to return to the region and to his unit, the soldier saying more than once that the Army saved him. Adam, meanwhile, is returning to his loving wife, Saskia (Haley Bennett, “The Girl on the Train”), and their two young children.

When Will returns to a home he expects to be filled with the life being lived by his girl and her daughter — whom he has been a father figure to since birth — it is empty, and his obviously former fiance is not answering her phone when he calls.

Solo returns to his wife, Keisha Castle-Hughes (“Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith”), who tells him she doesn’t want him going back to Iraq and that she wants to have a baby. It is obvious from his face that her desires do not align with his, but it’s also clear he wants to please her.

Of the three, life seems most promising for Adam, even if his family is not, for the moment, living in the home they bought, due to financial reasons. Sure, he missed the memo that his daughter doesn’t like chocolate in her pancakes and his infant son seems to be an afterthought to him at times, but Saskia is happy to have him home.

As “Thank You for Your Service” unfolds, the story focuses on Adam and Solo. It quickly and increasingly becomes clear just how much the latter is suffering. Solo has serious issues with memory and is uneasy and jumpy, thanks in part to visions he has of another soldier appearing in places such as a food court.

But Adam must admit, first to himself and then to Saskia, that he also has major issues. She begs him to open up to her — she says she’s as tough is he is but can’t take “quiet” — and eventually he does.

First, though, he and Solo visit an office of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, which is where “Thank You for Your Service” starts to illustrate how common problems such as theirs are. (In the packed waiting room, an electronic counter like the kind you’d find at a deli counter says they are now serving No. 232.) After filling out some forms, Adam is told that while it typically takes 12 weeks to get assistance, a backlog has pushed that timeframe to nine to 12 months, a situation that, understandably, frustrates him greatly.

As “Thank You for Your Service” marches on, Adam and Solo continue to deal with their demons, with only occasional cracks of light appearing at the end of their respective tunnels. Put simply, there’s some rough stuff here.

The film feels like an incredibly sincere effort to shed light on these issues on the part of Hall, who has family members who served in combat and who obviously previously was moved by the story of Chris Kyle, the subject of the aforementioned acclaimed based-on-real-events 2014 drama “American Sniper.”

There is much to like about his first effort as a director. To a large degree, this is not an uplifting story and, while not pulling punches, Hall manages to keep the film from merely wallowing in depression, even if it comes close. The storytelling is a bit muddy — Hall doesn’t reveal exactly what happened to Adam and Solo in Iraq until the end, no doubt for dramatic purposes, but it comes as more of a distraction than anything else.

He gets a nice performance from Teller — already in theaters in the commendable firefighter drama “Only the Brave” — who despite frequently playing a character who is a bit of a jerk is very relatable here. However, it’s the little-known Koale who makes the greatest impression, giving a performance that is at times delicate and at others violent, but that always feels truthful.

Don’t miss

About the Author

Mark is a lifelong Northeast Ohioan and an Ohio University grad. Along with loving music, movies and television, he is crazy about sports and tech. Reach the author at mmeszoros@news-herald.com
or follow Mark on Twitter: @MarkMeszoros.